


Origins

by twotor



Series: Frost Academy [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-25 07:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20720105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twotor/pseuds/twotor
Summary: Three teens have their lives turned on their heads when they're invited to the Jonathan Frost Academy for Pseudohumans





	1. Chapter 1

**DANIEL JONES**

If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that there’s always a catch. I spent 16 years (well, maybe more like 12) dreaming of the day I’d go to the City of Stars, visit the Nexus Memorial and the Guard Tower, and wait outside for four hours until I’d get my chance to walk through the Gates of Vigil and touch the forcefield and look through at _ the _ Round Table. Heck, I thought I might even get a chance to see a member of the Vigil in the flesh.

On the one hand, now I was actually seeing every single one of them, in full swing, and it was more awesome than I ever dreamed. On the other hand, there was a building falling on my head. If I survived, I might get to shake hands with Tempest, maybe even get a photo. If I didn’t, well…

“Move, kid!” I heard someone growl.

It occurred to me that I was just standing there, monologuing internally while chunks of rubble were raining down from above. And yet, I couldn’t move. I was just looking up as the bricks fell. I saw tendrils of red light flying up above me. That was Vanguard. They knitted together like wool and formed a massive glove, indeed, a glove so massive that it was literally holding a building above my head. I’d like to say I was in this mess because I was pushing a pram out the way or trying to save an old lady, but really, I just freeze up when I’m stressed, and I have a knack of winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like, say, under a falling building. I had school in two weeks. The Club was going to freak. They were going to be so sorry they hadn’t come along - that is, if I survived.

I was moving too fast to see anything. Someone was holding me. It didn’t hurt when they picked me. Must be a psychokinetic. Could it be? And then I was hovering, and next to me was Astra. Astra who once punched Doom-Monger into space. Astra who once single-handedly powered a hospital for three hours when the backup generator failed. She was GPD-ranked number 1 for psychokinesis, and as a Permanent Captain of the Vigil she had one of the highest approval ratings as well. Maybe it was the sudden deceleration… no, that’s not how psychokinesis works. Well, either way, I blacked out.

* * *

“Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes.”

I opened them, and sat up slowly. There was a paramedic kneeling next to me. I felt more or less fine. A little queasy. There were periodic flashes of light as reporters swarmed on the other side of a barricade. The other side. Weird. A few members of the Vigil were still there, helping to put together the slightly-destroyed buildings. I craned my neck to see if I could spot Tempest, but unfortunately it seemed like it was mostly B-listers. Well, Vanguard was there, actually, using his massive ghostly hands to pick up bits of buildings and put them back together like lego bricks, and somebody was with him helping to fix them in place. There were firefighters too, searching the rubble, but mostly they were trying to stay out of the way while Vanguard did the heavy lifting.

“Are you ok?” the paramedic asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “fine, thanks. Just a little…”

The crowd picked up. The cameras were flashing more frequently. I looked to see what had caught their eye. And there he was, Esper, in that iconic black coat that trailed on the floor and his signature black metal mask, walking straight towards me. No, not me, the paramedic.

“What’s your name, sir?” Esper asked. His voice was crisp and deep.

“Oh, uh,” the paramedic said, “Joe.”

“Joe,” Esper echoed, lingering over the sound. “Thank you for your help today. Our work wouldn’t be possible without men like you.”

He perched on the floor next to me.

“How about you?” he asked.

After a full five seconds of mental preparation, I finally managed to say “Daniel.”

The mask gave nothing away. He just kept staring at me. He reached out towards me and tapped my chest. “What’s this?” he asked.

I looked down. “That’s my badge. I’m a member of the Young Vigil, in Massachusetts.”

“That’s a gold badge,” he said, running his thumb across it. “You have to work quite hard to get one of those, Daniel”

I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say when you’re talking to the man that knows everything? That was Esper’s power - he was always ten moves ahead of everyone else. So why would he even be talking to me?

“I suppose,” he said, “you’re here on a tour of the city. Are you all on your own?”

“Yeah. No. I mean, I’m with a couple other people, for a competition. I’m meant to be back at the hotel at 7.”

“That gives us a few hours then.”

“What for?” I asked.

“How would you like to have a drink in the Guard Tower?”

I can’t describe how it felt. I’d survived, and I’d seen The Vigil in action, and I’d even been picked up by Astra, and now, Esper was inviting me back to the Guard Tower for tea. There had to be a catch.

“Vigil Command,” Esper said, “get someone to drop me and a friend in the Guard Tower.”

That was it. I had heard Esper, a permanent Captain of the Vigil, say ‘Vigil Command’. And I was a ‘friend’. I knew it was probably just a formality, but still. I couldn’t work out whether this was more stressful than having a building fall on me. The only thing that could make this day more awesome would be seeing Tempest. But obviously, meeting two Vigil Captains was more than I could ever ask for.

“Yes,” Esper said. “Another one. But trust me.”

He turned to me and extended a hand. The buildings and people in front of me contorted like a heat haze until there was just a patch of black. Then an arm reached out of the black, and touched Esper, and then everything was distorted and dark.

* * *

The darkness gave way to light, and we were standing up, me and my friend Esper.

“Thanks, Command,” Esper said.

I looked around. This was the Tower of Vigil. In front of me was the largest single pane of glass in America, beyond the capabilities of modern technology to produce. And past it was the breathtaking sight of Star City, home of heroes. A surprising number of the buildings I could see were on fire or falling down or just generally collapsing. Apparently that’s common here. Only four or five, but that’s still quite a lot of buildings to be having accidents. But that didn’t matter now. It paled in comparison with where I was now. All around me, the greatest heroes still on active patrol were pacing around having slightly heated conversations. I had so many questions. I didn’t even know what had knocked that building over in the first place.

“We don’t yet know what’s causing this. It seems to be a coordinated strike by several groups, although nobody involved seems to realise that they’ve been coordinated. You know, Daniel,” Esper said, “we don’t just give out this treatment to everyone.”

A man in a striped gold and black bodysuit ran over. I think I vaguely recognised him from a playing card. Edgerunner, maybe. “Esper,” he said, “the city’s collapsing. What do we do?”

“Don’t worry,” Esper said. “The situation is under control, and the worst has passed. You should go see your father. Now if you don’t mind, I’m a little busy.”

Without bothering to let Edgerunner (I think) say anything more, Esper put his arm around me and led me across the room.

“As I was saying, we don’t do this for just anyone.”

“Of course,” I replied. “Thank you so much for taking me here. This is amazing.”

“I’m glad you like it. But I didn’t bring you here because of the badge.”

I frowned. “Why did you bring me here then?”

He began to walk towards the coffee machine, guiding me forwards with his arm. I couldn’t help but snatch a glance of all the superheroes just sitting around little circular cafe tables.

“Try not to stare too much,” Esper said.

At the table, he took a cup and filled it with coffee. Then he reached into a mini-fridge, and handed me a can of Dr Fizzman.

“Am I right to assume you know what my power is?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied. He kept staring at me so I kept talking. “You’re hosting the Esper spirit in you. It gives you supernatural intuition. That’s how you answer my questions before I ask them. That’s how you knew Dr Fizzman is my favourite drink. That’s why you’re considered one of the most powerful heroes out there, enough to rival people who can knock over buildings, because you always know what to do.”

“That’s correct,” he replied. “And that’s why I want you to have this.”

He reached into his coat and produced a sealed letter, with no name written on it. I held it like a family heirloom.

“Go ahead, open it. It’s meant for you.”

I peeled the flap off, and removed the crisply folded paper from within. I unfolded it. I read the top line out loud. “Letter of recommendation. We of the Vigil do hereby recommend that the holder of this letter be awarded a place at the Jonathan Frost Academy, along with one Vigil-funded full scholarships.”

I looked up at him, and back down at the paper. “Jonathan Frost Academy?”

He nodded. “It’s where I and many other superhumans were educated. It’s meant for people like us.”

“Us?”

“This letter is meant for you.”

“So I’m a superhuman?” I asked.

“Esper!” somebody shouted. The hairs on my arms stood up. I recognised the voice instantly. I’d heard it on TV so many times. My favourite toy when I was 7 was a Talking Tempest Action Figure, actually.

“Esper,” Tempest said, “what just happened? Why wasn’t there an alert?”

“Don’t worry,” Esper said. “The situation is resolved.”

“That wasn’t an answer,” Tempest said. I could feel static in the air. My hair was standing on end. He was easily half a foot taller than me, but still he looked somehow small now he wasn’t on TV.

“We’ll talk in a minute,” Esper said. “Have you met Daniel?”

Tempest turned to me. His eyes were, for want of a better word, electric. His expression softened. I could feel the static falling out of the air. He put his hand out to shake mine. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Tempest.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. I just kind of stared at him. This was definitely worse than having a building fall on you. And now nothing could save me.

He brought his hand back. He looked down at the letter I was holding. “You’re going to Frost’s?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What’s your power?”

I looked at Esper, and back at Tempest. They were both staring at me. Was this a nightmare? Was I dead? Was this hell?

“He doesn’t know,” Esper said.

“Oh,” Tempest said. He frowned at Esper. “Do you?”

Esper tilted his head back slightly. “No.”

That was the catch. There’s always a catch.

“Well,” Tempest said, “if the man with the best intuition in the world,” he glanced at Esper “thinks you should be going to a school for people with superpowers, I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

He reached out and patted my arm. I felt a slight electric shock.

Esper turned to me. “You can leave out the elevator. Or if you ask the receptionist, there’s a private exit to avoid the paparazzi.”

“Do you want my contact details?” I asked.

Tempest laughed. “We’ll work it out,” he said.

* * *

**JAMES DAVIES / JACKDAW**

London’s a crazy place. Something like nine million people live here now. They come from all across the world to get mashed into a city that’s existed since the Roman empire. What I love most about it is that it always surprises you. I’ve been looking after the city for four years, and I never stop being amazed by how good and kind some of the people of London are.

And amidst all the craziness, sometimes I liked to come here to the centre, and the skyscrapers. Seems like there’s a new one every few months these days. You get a weird sense of perspective from up here, looking down at how enormous the city is, and how small every individual person in it is, even you, while also realising how lucky you are to even be able to come up here. On a night like this, it’s so beautiful. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. But hey, with great power comes all sorts of other stuff. So, my peace up here never lasts long.

There was a sharp set of three beeps. Red alert.

“I hear you Weaver,” I said. “Where am I going?”

My earpiece buzzed. “You’re not going to like this, Jackdaw,”

“Spit it out, Weaver. We don’t have all night.”

“Quite,” the earpiece buzzed. “It’s a paranormal alert.”

“We only have those installed at -” I began, but I trailed off.

I felt the gears turning in my head as I processed what he meant. Scratch what I said earlier. I don’t always like surprises. Sometimes they’re a pain.

“It’s coming from 14 Bromwell Avenue,” Weaver said.

It was a secure line, but it was worth being at least a little subtle. Weaver wasn’t going to say it out loud. But that was my house.

I took one last look at my city. Google maps doesn’t do it justice. All the lights, twinkling, and the sounds of the people down there. I had saved a countless number of them. But right now, there were only three that mattered. My three.

I jumped off the peak. I couldn’t fly, but I could glide. My arms spread out and with them came the thin polymer that caught the wind. I burst forward. The wingsuit coupled with my psychokinesis pushing me upwards and forwards from this height would give me about a minute or so until I hit the ground. That should be long enough. Faster than a speeding ambulance, because I could go in a straight line.

I couldn’t think how this had happened. We’d always been so careful. The only people who knew my name were the members of the Nightguard and exactly seven trusted allies. Even by superhero standards, we were careful. And we had one of the best telepaths in the world protecting us, so nobody could have snooped. I was going to have a fun time patching this leak. But that would have to wait. Someone with powers was in my house.

I was getting carried away, and the ground was slowly approaching. I slowed myself a little as I dropped onto a roof near my house, and slipped into the garden. The back door was always unlocked. I’d told my parents so many times that it was dangerous, but they insisted on it for some reason. And now I was living elsewhere, I couldn’t keep tabs on them. I slipped into the garden.

“Ok, I’ve got you on the map,” Weaver said. “It’s above you and ahead.”

Nobody ever really thinks about all the things you can do with psychokinesis. But there are a hundred and one tricks I learned to call on. Like, for instance, softening my steps so I could run through the house and not make a sound.

“On your right,” Weaver said.

I pivoted onto the landing and moved forwards, prowling.

“Left,” Weaver said.

That was my younger sister’s room.

“Straight ahead,” Weaver said. “You’ve got backup coming in two minutes. Signal’s still there.”

Someone in my little sister’s room, doing something non-stop for five minutes. Telepathic surgery maybe, or building a portal. No way of knowing, unless I went in. There was a faint crackling noise, like broken electronics. I couldn’t afford to wait for backup. Silently, I turned the handle, and thrust open the door.

“Stop what you’re doing now!” I shouted.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!” a familiar voice cried out.

“Paranormal alert’s clear,” Weaver said through the earpiece.

I stood staring at the culprit. Sky blue eyes, check. Jet black hair, check. Just like me. Of all the possible metahuman threats, this was about the best outcome, but in other ways more or less the worst. It was my sister. Well, at least there wasn’t a leak.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked, harshly.

“No! Just me!”

“And you were the one, uh,” I trailed off.

“You’re Jackdaw, aren’t you? I’m Amber. I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, I just-”

“It’s alright, you haven’t done anything wrong.” I replied. “Weaver, can you get a sweep from Angela?”

I heard that familiar old voice in my head. “Hi Jason. There’s nobody else in the house. It’s just your sister. And by the look of it, she’s not lying.”

“Amber, where’s your family?” I asked.

“My parents are at a conference in Spain. I have an older brother who lives in London who was going to come check up on me but I guess he forgot.”

“Wait, what day is it?”

“Tuesday”

I cursed under my breath. She was right. I guess I had got muddled.

She gave me a funny look. “Hang on-”

There was a thudding noise in the backyard.

“Pendragon’s here,” Weaver said.

And now there was another paranormal in my house. This was a mess.

“What was that?” Amber cried.

“Don’t worry, Amber, that’s just a friend of mine. Weaver, tell him the door’s open.”

“Oh my god, that’s Pendragon, isn’t it?” Amber said. “Why are you all coming to my house?”

“You should probably come downstairs,” I said. “Plus, seriously? Superpowers. I mean, seriously, why would you ask why we’re coming to the house when you just…”

I had to restrain myself from treating her like my younger sister.

We went down to find Pendragon in full plate armour standing in my living room. This was not where I saw today going. But at least Amber wasn’t in danger. And frankly, if she was going to be a part of this world, she might as well know what was going on.

“Sit down,” I said, pointing to her chair. I took Pendragon into the kitchen and began to boil a kettle.

“Are you going to-” Pendragon began.

“Yes. She needs to hear the talk.”

“Do you want me to-”

“Yes,” I said. “You do it better. Her name is Amber. Tea?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Right.”

Pendragon walked through to the other room. I watched them, while the kettle boiled.

“Amber,” Pendragon began. “Show me your power.”

She nodded, and held her finger tips together. A little light arced between them.

“Ow!” she cried, at the static shock.

Pendragon sat down on a sofa. He wasn’t really sitting. In that suit, he’d break it, but he could fly, so he was just hovering above the sofa, pretending to sit, to make her feel better. “In future, you’re going to want to hold something conductive in each hand, like paper clips or metal sticks. But that’s beside the point. 

“Your power,” he said, his voice taking on a lofty tone, “is a ticket into a world beyond your comprehension. It may not seem like much, but it’s the start of something you can’t possibly hope to understand right now. So it’s a little unfair of me to say this now, but you need to make a choice. If you genuinely want it, then a telepath can reach into your mind, and take away all memories of this exchange, and put a little mental tic in your head that will stop you from ever triggering your powers. This is what we call telepathic surgery, and it will protect you from consciously developing your powers.

“However, if you’d rather, we can take you somewhere where you’ll be taught how to use your powers, and hone them into a force to shape the world. But be warned: once you’ve begun using your powers, they will become a part of you, a part that cannot be so cleanly and surgically removed by even the finest telepaths. And you will never be able to leave this world behind.”

Amber didn’t make a noise. I walked in with tea, a cup for me and a cup for her. She was just sitting there, looking at Pendragon in wonder.

“What’s it to be?” I asked.

“Red pill,” she said. “Red pill all the way.”

“What?” Pendragon asked.

“The Matrix,” I said. “It’s a movie reference. She wants to be like us.”

She nodded.

“Right,” I said. “That makes this bit a lot easier. Congratulations, Amber Davies, you just became a friend of the Nightguard. Take this.”

I reached into one of my pockets and produced a clean silver chain with a magnetic clasp. She put down the tea and held a hand out, and I let it fall.

“You should be able to put it on and take it off without breaking the clasp. If the clasp is ever broken, we will know, and it will be much easier for us to check up on you and get you help.”

“Wow,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

She slowly lowered the chain around her neck, tucking it into her shirt.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” she said, “but why are you doing all this for me? I mean, how do you have the time to look after me like this?”

I nodded. “Good question. But seriously you should be able to figure out the answer. I mean, I knew your surname, I knew where we keep the mugs...”

She frowned as the pieces fell into place. “Dad?”

I sighed. I drew my hand up to my head, and turned off my voice synthesiser, then carefully put my mask on the side.

Amber cocked her head. “Huh.”

“Look,” I said. “The school I went to, Frost’s, it’s not a normal school. It’s for people like you and me. If you apply, you’ll get in. It’s what made me the person I am today.”

“You’re Jackdaw,” she said. “The Jackdaw.”

“Yes.”

She was staring at me blankly. I snapped my fingers in front of her eyes, and she pushed my hand out of the way.

“But I’ve been around Frost’s,” she said. “I came with you on the open day. It’s just a normal school.”

“Come on,” I said. “It’s a school for telepaths and shapeshifters and everything in between. You remember when you came to see that play I was in, the Shakespeare one?”

“You mean Hamlet?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember because I wasn’t there. I was in the middle of the Pacific on a scavenger hunt.”

“But how-”

“Holograms. Trust me, you’re gonna love it there.”

* * *

**ALEX COLLINS**

“I know this all seems strange. Just do as I say. Explain to me what happened last night, in as much detail as you can.”

“Ok,” I said. “I was being driven home, by a friend’s parent - Mr Wilson - across the countryside. It was late. The car swerved, and we went off the side of the road. I think we flipped. I remember flames, smoke, burning my throat and my eyes. I must have hit my head.”

“You’re doing very well,” he said.

He reached into his grey blazer and took out a pocket watch. He flipped it open, then snapped it shut. He scratched at his sharp grey goatee. When I tried to look at his face, my eyes slipped out of focus. Everything was out of focus.

“Do you remember anything after you passed out? Any dreams? Visions?”

I nodded. “There was something. It wasn’t quite a dream. More vivid. I was at the foot of a pyramid. But it wasn’t smooth - there were steps. And around the pyramid there was a jungle. At the top was a creature, made of fire. It was like a snake with wings, but not a dragon. It was long.”

“Did you touch it?” He asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m not sure.”

“Cast your mind back. What did you do when you saw it?”

I looked up at the bare ceiling and frowned. “I tried to climb the pyramid, towards it. But the heat was unbearable.”

I felt hot just thinking about it.

“That’s good. That’s very good. You’ve done well.”

I turned to him. His face was blurry. Everything was blurry. I felt a little numb. There was a droning noise in my ear.

“Why can’t I see?” I asked.

“You can take the drip out of your arm if you want. I’ll come find you when I can. I’m sorry.”

The droning faded with the blur. I was lying in a hospital bed and there was a drip in my arm. But there were no windows. There was nobody, nothing in the room except the bed, the machine next to me, the chair, and two doors.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know if it was day or night, or if my family was even still alive. I just wanted to get out.

I reached for the drip on my right arm, and pulled on the tube till the needle slipped out of my arm. A drop of blood welled up in the spot. I wiped it away. There was no mark. My arm looked wrong. It was more tanned than normal. My hands were wrong too. There should have been a little red dot on the side of my index finger. There should have been a mole on my left arm.

I pulled aside the flimsy blue bed sheet and stepped onto the floor. My feet were cold. They were the wrong colour too. I felt off balance. I took a few timid steps towards the doors. I decided to go for the one on the right. I reached out and my hand hit the door. My arm was the wrong length. My hand-eye coordination was shot. What was I?

I grasped the handle and pushed on it, but I couldn’t turn it. I twisted, harder, until I felt it begin to give. It snapped. I opened my hand, and the broken metal handle fell to the ground, clattering on the floor. I sighed, and turned to the left door.

Slowly, I wrapped my hand around the other handle. It felt looser. I turned it, and pulled the door open. The room on the other side looked like a bathroom - a toilet, a shower, and a sink. I stepped into the bathroom. There was a large mirror. I turned and looked at myself.

It took me a minute to be sure that the person looking back at me really was me. Tanned skin, soft, round face, green eyes, short red hair. I raised my hand, and the girl in the mirror raised hers.

I lowered myself gently onto the toilet seat. It felt cold. I ran my hand along the curve of my face. It was smooth, and warm. I leaned my head back onto the wall.

It’s hard to express how I felt. Isolated is the best word. I was cut off from my family, my friends, my home. I felt sick, like I needed to cry. I leaned forwards with my head between my knees. I think I stayed that way for about ten minutes before I finally stood up and walked clumsily back to the bed. I didn’t know where I was, or what day or time it was, and now I didn’t even know who I was.

* * *

When I woke up, everything was cold. He was sitting by my bed, in the chair. I recognised the grey beard and blazer, but again, whenever I tried to look at him, his face, my eyes went out of focus.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was deep and smooth.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where am I?”

“You can call me Echo, and you’re in a secure facility. To keep it secure, well, I can’t tell you any more than that.”

He got up, and walked over to the door where I’d snapped the handle. He picked the broken handle up off the floor.

“The room’s a little meagre,” he said, “but I’ve done what I can.”

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“In short, a group of people staged the car accident you were caught in, probably to kill you. We’d been monitoring them, so when we saw, we stepped in, and saved you. We brought you here.”

“Why were they after me?” I asked.

“Because you have powers. That’s why your appearance changed. That’s how you broke the handle.”

His answers felt deceptive. But I couldn’t place why. As if he were choosing his words and the details he gave very carefully.

“Also,” Echo continued, “your body temperature is about 10 degrees above average, and you are, as far as we can tell, fireproof.”

That was a little more surprising. Maybe that was why everything was so cold. 

“Is Mr Wilson ok?” I asked.

Echo sighed. “The car fell into a river, and was utterly wrecked. We tried our best to save him, but he didn’t make it.”

I felt my stomach twist.

“Am I going to be able to go home?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” Echo said. “For now, it’s too dangerous. If the people coming after you were to even realise you survived the attack, the lives of everyone you knew would be at risk.”

Knew. Everyone I knew. The word stuck in my mind. I put the tray aside.

“But my family are ok?”

“Yes. In fact, in a week your father will be promoted, and not long after, the teacher that has been neglecting your younger brother is going to be offered a job in another state. We will keep an eye on them for you, and keep you updated from time to time.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked.

Echo sighed, again, deeply. He stood up. “Because you have just been dragged into a shadow war, and cut off from your entire family, and similarly, they have lost you. It’s the least we could do.”

I nodded, slowly.

“What happens to me now?”

“Well,” Echo said, “in theory you could stay here, as long as necessary, as a guest. And in theory you could become an agent for our organisation. But I don’t think either of those options will appeal to you. So I have an offer to make you.”

“Oh?”

“There is a boarding school in London. The Jonathan Frost Academy. We will give you a new identity. You already have a new face. This academy, it’s special. You’ll learn to use your powers. And you’ll be safe there.”

“New identity?”

He scratched his goatee again.

“I can’t tell you anything more than that, for safety reasons. You have to accept. So, yes or no?”

“If I accept, I can leave here? Live a normal life?”

“Well, you won’t be able to contact your family, and you will be going to a school that specialises exclusively in people with superhuman powers. But it will be more normal than this.”

“Ok,” I said.

“You need to understand. No matter what, the only way you can survive is with my help, but for you to leave here, you need to agree to let me do what I need to do.”

“If I don’t accept, I can’t leave?”

“No. For your own safety.”

“Then I don’t have a choice.”

“You do. You always have a choice. But if you want to leave, and survive, you have to accept.”

I looked up at the blank ceiling, and the bare walls. “I accept.”

“Good.”

I almost thought I could see Echo smile. Why had he even needed to ask so carefully? I felt as though I’d just sold my soul.

“I’m going to give you your cover identity now. It will be a bit disorienting for a little while.”

He walked over, and rested his hand on my head. And then everything went dark.

* * *

It was like waking up from a dream. There isn’t a better way of putting it. At first it felt like nothing happened, I was just feeling a little nauseous. But I was in the same bleak room. Same two doors. Same one chair with Echo sitting in it. The trolley was gone.

“What happened?” I asked.

“What do you know about Alexandra Collins?”

For a moment I paused. I didn’t know an Alexandra Collins. I’d never heard of her. But now I thought about it, I knew she was a girl, born on July 2nd, about a month older than me, in Sacramento, California. Her father was named Frank, and he worked in insurance. Her mother was named Angie, and she had been a teacher until she passed away a few years ago. Her best friend was named Drew, and they became best friends on a camping trip, confessing their secrets around a campfire. Her first kiss was with a boy named Pat who was allergic to nuts, and she’d been eating roasted peanuts earlier that night, and freaked out that she was going to kill him, but in the end everything was fine.

“Everything,” I said.

“Everything?” Echo asked.

I thought harder. There were details missing. People she knew, but I wasn’t quite sure what they looked like. And things I remembered about her that she couldn’t know, like what it was like taking her home from the maternity ward fifteen years ago. And nothing from the past two months, or at least two months before the accident.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I gathered up everything anyone knows about Alexandra Collins,” Echo said, “and I put it in your head.”

“Who is she?”

“She was a girl just like you who discovered she had powers. One of them was changing her appearance. And unfortunately, she is gone. So you are going to be taking her place.”

“But I’m not Alexandra Collins. She’s a person.”

“From now on, you are.”

“No, I’m-”

The words caught in my throat. In my head, I knew what my name was. I knew it wasn’t Alexandra Collins. But it was like a box had been put around me, my memories.

“Good luck,” he said.

* * *

“Shame, isn’t it?” a deep voice said.

I was getting really sick of this. I turned around. It was Frank Collins. He looked older than the pictures. We were in a garden, surrounded by houses. I was standing up. The sun was high in the sky. Not a cloud in sight. This was Alexandra Collins’s house.

“What?” I asked.

“You getting up and leaving. By the time you’re done at Frost’s, you’ll be off to college, and then who knows where.”

I stared at him. He was looking at the sky, with his hands in the pockets of his big leather jacket.

“I’ll come visit in the holidays,” I said.

He laughed. “Come on,” he said. “We should go.”

“I’m not Alexandra Collins,” I said.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know.”

We stood there, for a while. He lowered his gaze down to me. His eyes were soft and brown. His face was creased, from many years of laughter.

“So,” he said, “where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you remember who you were?” he asked, tentatively.

“Yes.”

“Who were you?”

I shook my head. Hard. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, rising over my vision. I felt Frank’s great, strong arms around me. I let myself fall. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to me. I wiped away the tears. He led me into the house, through the glass bay doors that I knew so well. He pulled a chair out for me and we sat at that old rectangular oak table that I remembered eating at so many times.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Favour to somebody who got me out of a jam,” he said. He rubbed his nose. “I get the sense you aren’t too happy about all of this.”

I looked down at the table. I couldn’t bear to look around the room.

“Listen, I know you’ve got nobody right now. I know what that’s like. But what you’ve got here is a fresh start. And that’s rare. Now, you could stay here if you wanted, but seeing as you’ve got nowhere else to go, I think you might do alright at Frost’s.”

“Why are they doing this to me?” I asked, frantically.

“They want you to stay alive. I don’t think they’re all that fussed about if you’re happy.”

I took a few deep breaths, and wiped away the last traces of tears, and looked up at Frank. It felt like the first face I’d seen in months. Maybe it was. He was smiling at me, but his eyes were sad.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I drive you to Frost’s. You meet a bunch of other kids who’ve had their worlds turned on their heads. Together, you all muddle through. It’s that or nothing.”

“Ok.”

* * *

The bags and suitcases were already loaded in the car. It was an old red hatchback. Much bigger than one man could need. Frank had packed us lunch and plenty of water. It was a long drive from Sacramento to Oregon. I sat in the passenger seat, watching the buildings go by. I remembered them all.

Frank never looked at me. He just looked out forwards, at the road. “After I graduated from Frosts’s, I went into infiltration. I know what it’s like to keep your whole life secret. It’s a damn shame you have to do it at your age. I mean, wouldn’t you rather really believe you were just Alexandra Collins? So this was all simple?”

I ran my hand through my hair. It was smooth. We were out in the country now. It was a beautiful day.

“You’re a telepath,” I said, “aren’t you? That’s how you know what to say?”

Frank chuckled. “I wish. I’m just old.”

For a while I watched as every trace of the city faded away into the open country. The road cut right through the sprawling fields.

“You know, seeing as I’m your dad now,” Frank began, “I might as well give you some fatherly advice about Frost’s. It’s not a normal school.”

“What was it like for you?” I asked.

“Well, definitely not like it will be for you. I grew up in the Cold War. Things were a bit different. The government didn’t want people walking around who could level cities. And I was a prime candidate for an infiltrator. If I wanted to, I could look exactly like someone, and I had a knack for being persuasive. They put me through telepathic screening to make sure I wasn’t a spy for the Soviets, and then fast tracked me. I actually had a friend who turned out to be a 25-year-old Russian shapeshifter gone undercover. Dropped off the face of the earth when screening day came around. As for me, I was out in the field as soon as I was ready.” Frank sighed slowly. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, thankfully.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“I have friends who stayed on as teachers. Parts of it are the same. I don’t know what the last school you went to was like, but I imagine there wasn’t as much fighting.”

“Huh?”

“Hormonal kids with superpowers? The teaching staff figured out pretty quickly that they couldn’t stop the fights, and that people would get badly hurt if they weren’t kept in check. So there are big arenas, and there’s a compulsory freshers course in how to use them. If you want to pick a fight with someone, you do it in an arena, with a teacher watching.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“I had some wild fights back in my day. I had a little gang of friends. We were the oddballs who got lumped in Moore. We stuck to each other like magnets. We had this little hideaway, where we’d spend hours planning how to use our powers together. I miss those days.”

I nodded.

We were mostly silent for the rest of the journey, but occasionally we would talk for four or five minutes. Or rather, Frank would start telling me a story about his time, and then get distracted. A few details stuck in my mind. Try to make friends; don’t give the teachers an excuse to read your mind; don’t give the kids who look like radioactive freaks dirty looks because they tend to be more powerful than normal; get used to waking up in New York and having breakfast in Nevada. At this point, nothing was going to shock me much. Not after what had already happened.

Frank seemed nice. Like the sort of person I’d want my father to be. The only things I could remember about myself - who I really was - were that my brother didn’t like his teacher, and my father was going to get a promotion. I wondered if Echo was really going to keep me posted on them. Even though I hated this, I understood it. I was glad to know they were safe. And Frank really did seem very sweet, so that could have been worse. And even in all this chaos, I still had one thing to hold on to. I knew that there were people out there who wanted me dead, people keeping me apart from my family. Someday, somehow, I knew that I would find them, and fix this.

* * *

**ESPER**

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I looked up. Everything was white. We were hovering in an empty world.

“The blast,” I said, “I didn’t see what happened. Where are we?”

“Don’t you recognise it?” he said. “This is the rift between worlds. This is where your powers come from.”

I nodded. I reached up, and slid the mask off my face. It still didn’t feel like my mask. It was an icon. A perfect black metal cover, with two eye slits, and not a single thing more. I would never be worthy of it. But somebody had to wear it, and I had more right to it, to what it represented, than the man I took it from.

“I think,” I said, “I finally know why they always wore a mask.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It wasn’t about secrecy. It was because the mask, what it stood for, was more important than anyone that wore it.”

The world was empty and silent. The only sounds I could hear were my own breath, and the whirring noises his suit made. I tried holding my breath. It didn’t hurt. I wasn’t really breathing, then. Was I dead? That didn’t matter. This was never about our lives.

I looked up at him. “Is it over?”

“No. There is a chance.”

I heard a mechanical whirring, that same clicking that I’d spent years chasing, as he brought his hand up. The infinite white space distorted, and he vanished, and in his place they all appeared.

Wildfire was the first on her feet. A corona of fire rose up around her. “Where are we?”

Apex groaned with pain, as he fell sideways. Amber ran to catch him.

“We’re in a rift,” I said. “We’re in between dimensions.”

“What’s wrong with Apex?” Amber cried.

“Intuitive powers don’t work normally here,” I said. “His head’s getting overloaded by impressions from, I think, every possible world.”

Wildfire stormed over to me. “He betrayed us!” she cried. I could feel her spit on my face. “The Nexus Machine, the Arc, it was all a trap. This was their plan all along.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t believe that. I think he sent us here, because this is where we have to be, to fix it all.”

Amber looked up at me. She was holding Apex tightly. “How?”

“I know,” Maria said. She had been sitting, cross legged, perfectly still. “I read about this place in the archives. This is the rift between worlds. All predictive powers, intuition, divination, they flow through here.”

Apex groaned again. Amber brushed the hair away from his face.

“So?” Amber said.

“So,” Maria said, “from here, we can send out a message. If we use Wildfire’s spirit, and mine, as anchors, and Apex as a bridge into the worlds, we might be able to reach someone.”

“It’s impossible,” Wildfire said. “The chances that anyone’s listening, they’re next to none.”

“Not impossible,” Maria said. “There are many worlds. We only need one message to get through. Next to none, sure, but there is a chance.”

I smiled. I slipped the mask on over my head. It was a good fit.

“A chance is all we need.”


	2. Chapter 2

**DANIEL JONES**

It’s funny. I had no trouble convincing my parents that I’d heard about this miraculous private academy, that it offered full ride scholarships to promising students, and that there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to go. Frost’s had a remarkably convincing website with plenty of pictures of football pitches and smiling students. The one thing they didn’t believe was that I had actually got a scholarship. When I told my mother that I’d been recommended mostly because of having earned a Young Vigil Gold Badge, she confessed that she’d always thought being in the Young Vigil was a total waste of time and that I and my friends were deluded. I couldn’t bear to admit how right she was. In the end we had to phone the school to convince my father that this wasn’t some elaborate prank.

The hardest part was not being able to tell my friends the truth. We’d come up through the Young Vigil together, picking up litter off the street and trying to help old ladies cross the road. And of course we spent so many hours in my basement, pointing at apples really aggressively and hoping they’d move, trying to guess what was on the other side of cards, all that. I couldn’t tell them about Frost’s, or that in the end the badge and all the hours meant nothing.

It was difficult, leaving my entire life behind, but in a sense, this was my life. I’d spent years obsessing over the idea of being a superhero, waiting for the day when I’d find a glowing rock in my backyard and suddenly have to leave everything behind, even though part of me knew that it was never going to happen.

But now, somehow, it had happened. I got an email asking me to gather up my bags and wait under a bypass north of my house in two weeks on Monday at 2:13pm. It noted that if nobody had come to pick me up by 2:16pm, I should phone a certain number and leave swiftly.

And sure enough, at 2:13pm, on Monday, as I sat on a suitcase watching the cars drive by, a coach pulled up, underneath the bridge. 

The door opened and the driver came out. He had an enormous black handlebar moustache. He popped that side bit that bags go in - I’m not actually sure what they’re called - and slung my bags in.

“Frost’s, right?” he said, cheerily.

I nodded.

“First time?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“Go take a seat.”

The bus was mostly empty. The seats that were filled were mainly occupied by people who, well, didn’t really look like people. I think the official term is pseudo-human. One guy looked like a giant monkey, and another looked like a big lizard. I tried not to stare. Some of the people were actually incredibly attractive. Like, among the normal, no, not normal, but you know, among the ones that didn’t look abnormal, I’d say half could easily be models. There were about 40 kids on the bus. It was a big bus though. I sat on my own. When the bus came out from under the bridge, it came out in a forest. So that was a bit weird. It proceeded to drive out of the forest into a lot of snow, and then along the coast, stopping at each place for two or three minutes, and at that point I sort of stopped paying attention because it was making me feel sick. I had (obviously) spent a lot of time researching the taxonomy of superpowers, and this definitely wasn’t how teleportation normally worked. Then again, I could see how if anywhere were going to have a school bus that could do impossible things, it would be Frost’s.

I couldn’t get wifi, and the books I’d brought were deep at the bottom of my suitcase in the compartment below, so I just stared at the seat in front of me. Wood panelling, metal frames, this bus was fancy, and kind of old-looking. I drew the curtain next to my seat and closed my eyes. I wasn’t tired, but I knew how to pass the time in my own head. So I did. I mulled on everything that had happened so far, to lead me up to this moment, and on what might come next.

One thing I knew for sure was that Esper doesn’t make mistakes. If he did, the world would have been blown up by now. So I was definitely meant to come here. But I did remember him saying ‘another one’ to whoever picked us up. There were probably quite a few people who came to Frost’s without knowing what their powers were. And since I’d been headhunted by Esper, I was probably going to somehow be involved in saving the world. Well, maybe that’s a bit optimistic. It was conceivable that I was meant to come to Frost’s for just long enough to squash a butterfly before it set off a tornado on the other side of the world, and then I’d be sent back to being a normal kid. But hopefully I was going to become the most important superhero of my generation.

Finally, after maybe half an hour, I heard the engine switch off. I opened my eyes and drew the curtain. The bus had stopped in a thick forest, next to an eclectic sprawl of buildings.

“New pupils off first,” the driver said. “Everybody else, hang tight.”

I stood up, and moved out into the aisle. Nobody else had got up. I walked down, and as I did, a few other people rose nervously from their seats to follow me off the bus. A tall, slim young man came over to where we were waiting. He was smiling ever so slightly. 

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you through.”

His voice was deeper than I expected, and there was a confidence to it that surprised me. He turned and started walking, without bothering to check if we followed. He stopped at the door of a very large and quite unremarkable stone building. It looked like it had been built about 40 years ago and left to slowly collapse. There was a paper sign on the door that read ‘New Students This Way’

“I imagine you’ve all heard,” he said, “that this is a slightly unusual school.” He turned to look over the little crowd behind him. He was smirking. “Just go with it, for now.”

He pushed open the door, and we followed, down a narrow corridor that swerved to the right. I could see that if we had gone straight forwards we would indeed have gone into a hall, but from the brief glimpse I got of it, it seemed much more modern and impressive than the outside would suggest, and crucially, much larger. I thought back to the bus, jumping from forest to snow to coast. What had I got myself into?

When we came out of the building, we came out into a desert. The building we walked out of was small and concrete, and it had no windows. It looked like a bomb shelter. The terrain around us was flat, baked earth, cracked in the heat. Our guide led us onwards. In the distance I could see a few other buildings, all equally practical and resilient-looking. Up ahead about a hundred metres away, however, was a large white tent, and that seemed to be where we were headed. I looked at my shadow. I wasn’t totally sure, but I suspected that this was not wherever I’d been a minute ago. But if the bus could teleport (or something like it) why not just take us straight here?

At the edge of the tent was a long bench where a line of teenagers sat. Our guide gestured, and so I went to join, next to a short, pale girl with raven-black hair. The people behind me followed. Under the tent were four tables, each with a pair of teens (one of which was our guide). To the right, where they were facing, sat a group of what I assumed were teachers, talking amongst themselves. Some of the faces seemed familiar but I couldn’t place them. My eyes drifted across the room, all the way to the back, where I noticed another table, with only a couple of chairs around it, just about under the tent, and away from the other tables. There were two students sat there. I couldn’t quite make out the first - it looked like a man, but somehow I couldn’t focus on the figure. The second was, well, sort of like a spider centaur. What I mean by that is an otherwise normal-looking person who, instead of legs or anything else under the torso, has a giant spider body. So that was kind of cool.

“Welcome,” came a resonating voice from the front. “Welcome new students.”

I looked to the source of the noise. One of the teachers was standing up. A tall man in a crisp, pressed suit, with a jaw that could kill.

“I’m Principal Stevens. Look around you. These are the deserts of Nevada. For the past fifty or so yours, we’ve brought incoming student out here to test their powers. I can almost see them, the heroes of yesterday, Astra, Tempest, Vanguard, Esper, each of them took their turn to sit here. And now, I see before me the heroes of tomorrow. You have come here, I am sure, as children, afraid, and overwhelmed. You will leave as legends. My one piece of advice to you is this: Do not be complacent. You have a chance to learn from the world’s greatest, and make friends with the people who will shake the earth. It is up to you to take that chance and make the most of it.”

Around me people were murmuring and chattering over the speech. The older kids at the tables weren’t paying any attention.

“Now, ordinarily, based on your powers you’d be divided into houses by our very own Mr Briggs, an excellent intuitive. However, this year, as a special guest, we have someone very important. A Permanent Captain of the Vigil, distinguished as the finest intuitive in the world, it is none other than Esper.”

That name was enough to make everybody shut up. Principal Stevens sat down, and a tall, pale man with wispy black hair stood up and walked to the front. This is going to sound stupid, but I was expecting someone more handsome, or at least, someone with a smaller nose, given the sleek mask he was so famous for.

“Thank you, Principal Stevens” he said. His voice without the mask was less resonant. He probably had a vocal modulator. “If the first student would like to come up?”

A scrawny boy with a mop of brown hair walked up to the front. Esper turned to him, and stepped back a little.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Show me.”

The boy balled his fists and scrunched up his face, squatting slightly. I could hear the sound of him exhaling. He opened his left hand and pushed it forwards, and from his hand emerged three shards of something shiny and black, almost metallic. They fell from his hand, but Esper caught them. I thought back to my guidebook. This kid had to be some sort of shaper.

“Very good,” Esper said. “And your other power?”

The boy nodded. “Yeah.” He took a piece of paper out of the pocket of his jacket, and held it up. The top of it began to smoulder, and then flashed into a small fire. He blew it out.

Esper nodded. “House Kirby.” He pointed to one of the four central tables. One of the pairs of teenagers started clapping a little, and the boy hopped off the stage to join them.

I nudged the dark-haired girl next to me. She turned and looked at me with piercing blue eyes.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Do you know how the whole house thing works?”

“Oh, yes,” she whispered back. She sounded English. “It’s not official, but in general,” she looked across the table composing her thoughts, “Kirby is smart people who build things, mages and scientists and so on. Lee is big strong heroes. Kane is-”

There was a thud. Up at the front, in front of Esper, an impressively tall and well-built boy with an incredibly chiselled jawline was hovering somewhat shakily, upside down. He hit the ground again, with a thud, and then shot up into the air.

“Whoa!” he shouted.

A blue glow surrounded him, and he drifted back to the ground gently. On the teacher’s bench, a grey-haired man with his arm raised was also glowing blue. The man lowered his hand down, and the boy floated down to match it. The glow faded as the boy touched the floor.

Somebody let out a chuckle and the room erupted with laughter.

The boy mumbled something to Esper, and looked a little embarrassed.

“House Lee,” Esper proclaimed.

Another pair from the four central tables clapped a little.

I turned back to the girl. “You were saying?”

“Kane is for tricksters and rogues. Moore is the spare oddball house. And that one at the back,” she said, gesturing to the large table with the spider-centaur girl and the blurry guy, “is Giger. That’s for the ones who need extra care and support.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m Dan by the way.”

She smiled. “Amber. Nice to meet you.”

She reached out a hand to shake mine. I took it. Her hand was cold.

“So, uh,” I began as I tried to think of something to say, “what house do you think you’re going to be in?”

“Probably Kirby.”

“Oh yeah? What are your powers?”

She raised her eyebrows for a moment and smirked. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

I nodded and looked up to the stage. A few more people had been given houses as we’d been talking, but now there was a hold up. A pale, black-haired girl with sunken eyes was hissing something at Esper.

“Don’t worry,” Esper said. “It’s safe. Just show us.”

I could just about make her out saying “Do I have to?”

Esper just stood there, waiting.

Eventually, the girl gave an audible sigh, then slowly began to breathe in. Black lines shot out from around her in every direction, and began to burst out of the ground near her, squirming and writhing. A ball of blue glow halted their growth, and they began to knot together inside. The grey-haired teacher was glowing blue again. He rose to his feet and let out a grunt, like he’d been punched in the stomach. Inside the blue ball, the tendrils began to shrink back and dissipate, revealing the sunken-eyed girl breathing heavily. The blue ball vanished, and she fell forwards. Esper caught her. He whispered something in her ear, and she nodded slowly.

“House Giger,” Esper proclaimed.

At the back, where the blurry boy and the spider girl sat, there was no clapping. She walked away.

As she left, there was a loud pop, and a girl with blue hair and aviator goggles appeared next to Esper. Clearly somebody had already embraced the superhero aesthetic.

“House Kane,” Esper said.

The girl brushed aside her neon blue fringe as the Kane table began clapping, and with a small blue flash she vanished, and then, a few seconds later, reappeared with a pop at the Kane table. 

I looked at the bench ahead of me. There were only a few people left before Amber and I would have to go up. A tall, lanky boy with messy black hair went up on stage and murmured a few words to Esper. Esper nodded, and said a few things back. The boy made a final comment, and Esper put a hand on his shoulder.

“House Moore,” Esper said.

The boy went over to the table that was clapping. It looked like he was the first Moore student this year.

“Hey,” I said to Amber, “how come he didn’t have to show his power?”

“Weren’t you watching?” she replied. “He’s the third to not do anything.”

I suddenly felt profoundly relaxed. So there were a few people like me.

“He’s probably a telepath,” she continued. “Maybe an intuitive, or a processor; really he could have shown a few powers that we just can’t see.”

“Oh,” I said. There goes that pipe dream.

There was a flash from the front, that faded into a soft light. A glowing figure with what looked like large wings was standing next to Esper. The light was bright enough that I couldn’t make out the figure’s features. The light faded, as did the wings, to leave behind a soft-faced girl with wavy white hair down to her shoulders.

“House Giger,” Esper said.

She nodded slowly and walked off the stage towards the back. That was odd. She looked pretty out of place with the, well, slightly freakish kids. 

It was Amber’s turn now. She strode confidently up onto the stage, and smiled at Esper, saying something too quiet for me to hear it. Up on stage, I got a good look at her. She had a slight build, and was dressed very smartly - a long black dress and a white blouse. I wondered if that was how all English people dressed. She produced a pair of short metal rods and held them together. There was a cracking noise as small arcs of energy shot between the rods. So Amber was an electrokinetic.

“House Moore,” Esper said.

Another unexpected choice, maybe. I didn’t really know enough to be sure. But Amber looked confused. Anyway, my time had come. I got up, and walked along the empty stretch of bench where everyone else had been sitting, and took a last look at the people behind me who were waiting to go. Up onto the stage I went, face to face with Esper again. I was still kind of giddy at the thought of meeting him.

“Daniel,” he said to me, blankly.

“Hello again,” I said.

“Any luck figuring out what your power is?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“You’ll get there,” he said. He turned to the audience. “House Moore.”

Makes sense that I’d go in the spares house. Still, I was glad I was in the same house as the one person I had spoken to so far. I walked down the stage to my round of applause, and went to the Moore table, taking a seat next to Amber.

On the other side of Amber was the first person to be declared Moore, and across from us were the two older Moore pupils. One, a cheery girl with blonde hair that went down below the table and an absurd amount of jewelry was the first to speak.

“Hi!” she said. “I’m Mimi, and this is Jonah, and this is Finn, and this is Amber, and-”

I already knew I was going to forget all of those names.

* * *

**ALEX COLLINS**

The car traced the road around one last odd turn and all at once the sprawling forest gave way to an eccentric cluster of buildings which, though some were vast, had been totally out of sight until the turning of the corner. Frank navigated the car up into the main car park, where an attendant stood waiting. The attendant tapped the glass, and Frank rolled down the window.

“You’re a little late,” the attendant said to me. “Just head over to the auditorium over there, and follow the signs to the tent. We’ll handle the bags.”

Frank put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll see you soon. And if you ever need, you can call me. I wrote down contact details in one of the bags.”

I nodded, and slipped out of the car, walking briskly towards the auditorium. It was an enormous building, towering and stone. The path from the car park led smoothly to a set of double doors. I pushed open the left door and stepped in.

Ahead was an enormous, modern room, behind a glass door. A paper note on the door pointed right. I looked down the passage to the right, then back to the main hall. I walked up to the glass, looking in. The room was empty. I pushed on the door. It was locked. I thought about pushing harder, but then the memory of breaking the handle in Echo’s facility flashed into my mind.

I took the passage to the right, which led out into, of all things, a desert. Frank had warned me that this might happen, but still, actually doing it was different. I could feel the change in temperature and pressure, the air getting dryer. Up ahead was a tent. That must be where I was headed.

Under the tent were five tables with students, a few chairs at the front for teachers, and a bench running along the side with a couple more students on it. Four of the tables were in a square in the middle, with essentially normal-looking kids, and the fifth at the back was, I assumed, House Giger. There was one fairly normal-looking and actually quite pretty girl, one girl who looked like she was about to have a panic attack, one person who just looked kind of blurry (like Echo, actually), and someone who had a giant spider torso instead of legs.

I realised I was staring. I turned to the front. The people on the bench along the side seemed to be taking turns going up to the front. I joined the back of the queue.

“Kane!” the man on the stage shouted, and one of the tables started clapping. A boy hopped off the stage to go join them.

I nudged the guy at the back of the queue. “Hey, I’m a bit late. What’s going on?”

“Everyone’s being divided into houses. That’s Esper up there.”

Esper. For all the strange things that had happened to me since the accident, that was the first name I recognised. This place was serious.

The boy I had nudged got up to walk to the stage. I watched intently as he reached his hand into his blue jacket and retrieved something. He opened his hand, and a pocket watch slowly rose upwards out of it, still linked to his hand by its chain. The watch rose till the chain was taut, and then fell back into his hand. He slipped it back into the jacket.

“House Kirby!” Esper proclaimed.

And now it was my turn. I walked along the benches and up onto the stage. I have to admit, despite all the madness and trauma I was going through, for a moment I was just overwhelmed by the fact that I was meeting Esper. I mean, he was a big deal. I certainly didn’t expect him to look as pale as he did, or to have such a large nose. But it didn’t make him any less impressive.

“Hi,” I said.

“Ah, hello,” he said.

“So, uh,” I began, trailing off. I had no idea what to do. I had nothing heavy to lift up and I couldn’t exactly dramatically not set myself on fire.

“It’s alright,” he said, blankly. “I don’t need to see your powers.”

“Ok,” I said, frowning slightly.

“House Moore,” he said, loudly.

One of the little central tables started clapping. I walked down off the stage towards them. From behind me, I heard what I presume was the head teacher.

“Congratulations,” he boomed. “It’s time for you to go off with your Student Mentors to see where you’re staying. Go. Go with pride, because now you are a true member of the Jonathan Frost Academy, and so much more!”

I think he kept talking but at that point I more or less tuned out. I took a seat with the other Moore students. Before I had a chance to take them in, I felt a hand nudge me. The girl beside me was grinning broadly.

“Hi,” she squeaked. “I’m Mimi and this is Jonah, and we’re the Student Mentors for House Moore.”

Jonah raised a muscular arm to brush back his dark hair. “Hi,” he said.

“Now we’re all here,” Mimi said through a big smile, “we can go off to take a look at your rooms, and then we’ll take you around the campus. Oh, and we can do introductions as well!”

“Looks like the speech is over,” Jonah said. “Maybe we should do introductions now while the others file out, then it won’t be too busy.”

“Sounds great!” Mimi said. “Jonah, why don’t you start?”

Jonah nodded. “Well, I’m Jonah. I live in Hawaii. My powers are pretty general, but I’m good at psychokinesis with water, and I have some very short-range telepathy. I’m hoping to become a fully-fledged member of the International Vigil some day.”

He was big, and tough-looking, with a soft tan. But he was just wearing a plain white shirt. In a way he looked like the opposite of Mimi whose blonde hair went down below the tabletop, decked out in funny ornaments. I’d never seen one person wearing so much jewelry.

“Thanks Jonah,” she said. “Hi guys, I’m Mimi, from California. I’m a diviner, which is like long-term intuitive stuff, and I get crazy flashes of inspiration to do with the future and sometimes the present, and one time also the past.”

Inside I winced. A diviner from California might make my lie a bit harder to pull off. Even if I knew every detail about Alexandra Collins and none about myself, it still felt wrong to use them. If this was a fresh start, I couldn’t fall back on just being her.

“Crazy story,” Mimi continued, “I actually ran away from home and just came here because a vision told me to! Also I can do a bit of sorcery, not much, but I’m working to get better. I’m hoping to be an independent freelance oracle. Now, how about you?”

She had fixed her smile on a girl with long, jet black hair, pale skin, and bright blue eyes.

“Ok,” the girl said, smiling softly. “I’m Amber. I’m from London. I can control electricity a little bit. I don’t yet know what I want to do, but I’m looking forward to learning about my powers.”

“That’s great to hear,” Mimi said. “You’ll have a great time here. And how about you?”

Next along was a tall, thin boy with a mess of black hair who looked kind of out of it.

“Oh, uh,” he began, looking around the room for his thoughts, “I’m Finn - Finley, but everyone calls me Finn, or at least they did. I’m from Germany, but my family’s Japanese. And I can see things. Like, you,” he pointed at me, “you have, uh, fire coming off you. I don’t know. It’s not quite like seeing stuff but that’s the best way to describe it.”

I nodded slowly. I was less and less confident that I was going to be able to keep up any sort of masquerade.

The other boy leaned forwards towards Finn. He had short black hair and a very plain face, the sort that blends into a crowd. “If you can see things, do I- uh, do any of the rest of us have anything, you know, special?”

Finn shook his head. “No. Lots of other people here do, but nobody at this table.”

The boy nodded in a slightly defeated way.

And now Mimi’s expectant look suggested that it was my turn to talk.

“Ok. Hi, I’m,” I thought about it. Alexandra Collins. It was always Alexandra. She hated being called Alex. “I’m Alex. From California. I’m fireproof, and I’m kind of strong.”

There we go. That was easy. I had had my turn, and now someone else would talk. Mimi smiled at me for a little longer, then gave up and moved on.

“Great,” Mimi said enthusiastically. “Now how about you?”

She turned to our last member, the boy with the plain face. The boy nodded.

“I’m Dan, I’m from Boston, I’m a huge fan of superheroes, and I was actually found and told to come here by Esper himself. But even though he’s completely sure I’m definitely meant to be here, neither of us actually knows what my power is. So, like the rest of you, but perhaps in a slightly more extreme way, I want to learn about my powers. After that, I’d like to join the Vigil, but what part I join really depends on what I can do.”

Mimi nodded slowly - that had caught her out a bit. I was guessing that people didn’t tend to show up here without powers. Dan looked a little concerned.

Jonah put his hand on the table. “Don’t worry about it, man. Lots of people find new powers after they’ve been here for months and years. The school will back you up, especially if Esper sent you.”

Dan nodded.

“Right!” Mimi squeaked. “It’s time for you all to see where you’re going to be living!”

* * *

**AMBER DAVIES**

It’s a strange feeling, to look at someone and know you’re going to be friends with them. These three were going to be my companions through thick and thin. And it was amazing to see everyone’s powers, and know that they were only going to get stronger. Admittedly, the showing from Moore had been a little less impressive than the other houses, but I wasn’t complaining. This was going to be an awesome few years.

Mimi - the one with the exotic jewelry and the long hair - got up from the table.

“Right,” she chirped, “it’s time for you all to see where you’re going to be living!”

We all got up somewhat slowly and walked out of the tent back to the bunker.

“This bunker,” Mimi said, “leads to The Hub, which is the centre of the school. From The Hub, there are five doors, one for each of the houses. You see, every house is located in a slightly different place. Like, oh, say,” she paused dramatically, grinning wickedly, “Oregon, Nevada, Switzerland, London, and Oxford.”

Jason (or should I call him Jackdaw?) had warned me about this, so I took the opportunity to look around rather than acting surprised. Dan, one with no powers, looked absolutely stunned, and Finn, the lanky Japanese German, looked pretty puzzled himself. However, Alex, the pretty redhead, looked totally unfazed.

Jonah chimed in. “Frost’s was set up by metahumans, so it’s one of the few places built using superpowers. There are extra campuses in a few other places, and lots of classes in odd spots. You get used to it.”

“Yeah,” Mimi said, loudly regaining control of the conversation, “I actually took a class on wilderness survival last year. If you’re not too squeamish it’s amazing because they just send you off to the most amazing places. Anyway, let me show you the Moore door.”

We wove down the corridor into a large common room scattered with tables, sofas, workstations, and a small cafe. There must have been at least ten doors in and out, but five stood out. Each was particularly large, and though they were all exactly the same size and shape, each door was styled differently, and marked with a plaque. We had just come out of the one marked ‘Nevada - Kirby’, which was built like a blast door, metal, and with a series of strange locks built in. Mimi took us across to the other side of the room, to an antique wooden door. Above it, the plaque read ‘Oxford - Moore’.

“Home, sweet home,” Mimi said.

She pushed open the door, and Jonah went through first, holding it open while we followed into a large courtyard bordered by wild-looking plants. We gathered around a water fountain in the middle, where a selection of bags, including mine, had been neatly piled up.

I paused to consider the implications. In the minutes since we’d been allocated rooms, the details had been passed on to somebody who was then able to move all the bags. This place was going to be interesting.

“This,” she said, “is Frost College, Oxford. Oxford’s a little university town in the middle of England, and the Oxford University is split up into lots of little colleges, each with their own students and lives. This one, set up by one Jonathan Frost, is the place where we provide college education to our more mature students looking to do more advanced work. It is also the lodgings for House Moore. The downside is, if you go out at night after the portals have closed, which you absolutely aren’t meant to do, you aren’t going to find much going on because this is quite a small place. The upside is that usually there’s only one or two Moore students per year so you get your own room. But I don’t think that applies so much to you lot. Actually, this is an unusually large year. You’ll probably get more people showing up over the course of the year, by the way.”

“Also,” Jonah said, “there are parks around here, but if you want to go somewhere green, it’s nicer to go over to Giger, in the forests of Oregon. Moore does have nice architecture and old rooms, but they can get chilly in winter.”

Maybe it was a British thing, but I really liked the architecture. It was charming in the way only old stonework can be.

“Right,” Mimi said, “how about you all grab your bags and come down here.”

She marched off to an open door leading out of the courtyard into a little corridor with four doors on either side. I went over to get my gear. I had brought a modest amount that I thought would be easy to carry, all in one quite large suitcase, on the promise from Jason that if I forgot anything he could ship it to me. 

Finn had brought a sensible amount in one large trunk and one smaller suitcase. He went for the trunk to start with, rolling it after him. Alex had brought a very large trunk and a sizeable suitcase. She picked the trunk up, with a little effort, although nowhere near as much as you’d expect a trunk like that to merit, especially from someone with such a slight build. She took the suitcase in the other hand.

Dan had brought a lot. Two big suitcases and a backpack. Jonah went over to help when he saw Dan struggling, and picked up one of the big suitcases. We all went into the corridor.

“Right!” Mimi said, gesturing to two doors. “Boys in this room, girls in that room.”

“A word of warning,” Jonah said. “This is an international school but we run on US time. Washington DC time, specifically. You’re sleeping in the UK. So, US kids, the sun’s going to set here in a couple hours. European kids, intro classes will be mostly in the mornings for the first few days, but try to adapt.”

“Ok,” Mimi said, “take like 10 minutes to freshen up and unpack a bit, then we’ll take you around the school.

  
  


Alex took her bags into what I assumed was the girls’ room, leaving the door to swing shut. I followed after her. It was a modestly sized room, probably more than twice the size of my bedroom, built into a sort of L shape - one longer prong in front facing the door, and a shorter one to the right. Each of the two prongs had a single bed, a counter with a lamp, a desk with a pinboard above it, and a wardrobe. On the left, there was a little door which I presumed was the bathroom. So this was my life. Alex was standing in the corner that looked out at both beds, very much blocking my path.

“So,” I said, “which one do you want?”

I wanted the one on the right, a little more tucked away and private. But, well, it’s polite to ask. 

“I’ll take the little one on the right,” she said.

She threw her bags effortlessly into her part of the room. They landed with a thud. She walked over, turned, and fell back onto the bed, nestling her hands behind her head.

I sighed, and wheeled my suitcase over to my part of the room.

“We’re going to be roommates for the next year, then,” I said.

“Mm,” Alex murmured back.

“I guess we should get to know each other?”

“Oh,” Alex said, “I guess.”

I unzipped my suitcase and began taking clothes out, hanging them up in the wardrobe.

“So where are you from?” I asked.

“I said earlier. California. You?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m from North London, a place called Camden. It’s a real cultural mix. There’s this huge market and all sorts of”

“London,” she said. “With the Queen, and stuff. You know the Night Guard then?”

Around the corner, where she couldn’t see me, I smiled. My hand touched the necklace.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do. But how about you? California: what part? City or country?”

I finished taking clothes out of the case and moved on to everything else while I waited for her to reply. My old laptop, a few good books, a couple postcards.

“City. Sacramento. Near the edges.”

This was going to be an uphill battle. I leaned over to look into her corner. She was just lying there.

“Are you going to unpack or anything?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess.”

I heard the muffled sounds of her getting off her bed and unzipping a case and opening a wardrobe. I began prying pins out of the pinboard above the desk, and putting up my postcards.

After a little while, I leaned back to look at her. Black skinny jeans, a white shirt, and a black hoodie. The outfit gave nothing away. She was very exotic-looking - I don’t think I’d ever seen hair so flaming red - but even her bags were bland - a large grey trunk, and a smaller black suitcase. And she was just lying there, fiddling with something.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

She looked up at me, like she was snapping out of a trance. “Nothing,” she said.

Whatever was in her hand was pretty small. She tossed it into her open suitcase, and I caught a glimpse - it looked like maybe a postcard or a book. Strange.

I took my wash bag out of my suitcase and went through the door to the bathroom. It was actually pretty spacious. I fished out some antiperspirant.

There was a knocking on the door. Alex walked over and opened it.

“Hi,” came Mimi voice. “You guys ready to keep going?”

“Sure,” Alex said.

I walked out of the bathroom and she had already gone outside. I looked over at her suitcase. I could see what she had been fiddling with - a letter, sitting there. This was going to be a strange few years.

I heard a loud thud.

“Uh,” came a shout from nearby. It was Daniel. “Help!”

  
  


* * *

**DANIEL JONES**

It had all happened so fast. I’d been slowly unpacking while Finn told me about Germany, and Mimi had come in to tell us it was time to go, and then she went sheet white. A few seconds later she keeled over sideways. I just about caught her.

The weight of her falling on me was enough to knock me back against the wall. I hit it hard.

“Uh,” I shouted, “Help!”

Finn came round the corner and looked down at us, panicked. I lowered her onto the floor. Finn leaned down to put his hand on her face.

“I’m going to check her pulse,” he said, “to see if-”

And then he went pale as well. His eyes rolled up. I reached out to try to catch him, as he tipped over as well, half-collapsing on top of her. I decided that getting my hand under his head was most important, but as he fell, it fell too, and twisted his neck at an odd angle.

“What the-” I exclaimed.

I heard a banging on the door. Finn and Mimi’s bodies were blocking it.

“What’s going on?” Jonah shouted.

“Mimi just went white and fell over,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Jonah said. “Mimi must be having a vision. Just move her out of the way.”

“No,” I said, stepping over her to pull Finn back until he was leaning on the back of his bed, “but Finn’s passed out as well.”

I pulled Mimi back as well, to lean against my bed, and the door swung open. Jonah stepped in, to look at them.

Amber came in behind him. “What do we do, Jonah?”

Jonah crouched down next to Mimi. “Check Finn’s eyes,” he said, reaching out to raise Mimi’s eyelids slightly. I looked over his shoulder and saw that they were rolled upwards, and shaking around.

“They’re flickering,” Amber said, kneeling next to Finn. “They’re rolled back, and they’re flickering.”

“He said his power was seeing things,” Jonah said. “Maybe he’s seeing her vision.”

“Should I go get somebody?” Alex asked. She was standing in the doorway.

There was another thud, from behind. Amber had fallen over as well, limp, just like the other two.

“No,” Jonah said. “I’ll have to. You don’t know the way. You two stay here.”

He drew himself up and jogged past Alex. I could hear his feet hit the ground hard outside.

Alex kneeled down gently by Finn. “What happened?” she asked, effortlessly lifting Amber onto the bed.

“Wait!” I cried.

But it was too late. Within a few seconds, her eyes rolled backwards too. I lunged over Finn to catch her. She fell into my arms. She was warm to the touch. I dragged her across the room, and lay her down on my bed, next to Mimi.

  
  


And there I was, in my new bedroom, with four unconscious people. According to Jonah, Mimi was having a vision, and Finn probably was too. I checked the other two and found their eyes flickering as well, so maybe they all were. For some reason, Jonah and I were fine, but physical contact had caused whatever this was to spread between them. I felt so dumb just standing there, waiting, so I adjusted Finn’s body so he was lying a little less awkwardly. Then I went to do the same to Alex, but it felt a little odd because, well, she was a girl, as were Mimi and Amber, so I left them all be, and sat on the floor in the middle. What were they seeing?


End file.
